Title: FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ACTION
1 FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTIN ACTION
- W. James Popham
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Oakland Schoolsin Partnership with the Michigan
Assessment Consortium - NATIONAL SPEAKER SERIES
-
- Waterford, Michigan
- February 6, 2015
2Todays Foci Four Understandings about Formative
Assessment
- What It Is and What It Isnt
- What It Can Do and What It Cant
- One Cut of Formative Assessments Cake
- Why Learning Progressions Must Lurk
-
3Formative AssessmentWhat It Is
-
- Formative assessment is a planned process in
which assessment-elicited evidence of students
status is used by teachers to adjust their
ongoing instructional procedures or by students
to adjust their current learning-tactics.
4Formative Assessment What It Isnt
- It is not a test.
- It is not an interim test (also referred to as a
benchmark or periodic test) administered every
few months by schools or districts. - It is not the unplanned, serendipitous use of
student cues to adjust teaching.
5A Turn Talk Task
- Please turn to one or two nearby neighbors, if
possible, selecting those who seem fairly bright.
Assume they are not educators but, rather,
laypeople who are concerned about our schools.
They have asked you to tell them what is meant by
this formative assessment stuff. Alternately,
describe to each other what this label means.
6FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
7Why Michigan Teachers Should Routinely Employ
Formative Assessment
- School Accountability Because students
performances on accountability tests will play a
key role in determining a schools success. - Teacher Evaluation Because the best evidence of
student growth in teacher evaluation is apt to be
students pre-post performance on classroom tests.
8A Turn Talk Task
- Please turn to one or two nearby colleagues, then
take turns trying to persuade each other that
teachers should use formative assessment on the
basis of either (1) school accountability or (2)
teacher evaluation. Thereafter, choose the other
reason and, once more, trot out your persuasion
ploys.
9Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do
- In a research review based on 250 empirical
studies of classroom assessment that had been
drawn from more than 680 published
investigations, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
concluded - The research reported here shows conclusively
that formative assessment does improve learning.
(Assessment in Education, 1998)
10Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do
- Two Other Quotes from the Research Review
- The student gains in learning triggered by
formative assessment were amongst the largest
ever reported for educational interventions. - Significant gains can be achieved by many
different routes, and initiatives here are not
likely to fail through neglect of delicate and
subtle features.
11And More Recently
- Five reviews of the research in this area
synthesized a total of more than 4,000 research
studies undertaken during the last 40 years. The
conclusion was clear When implemented well,
formative assessment can effectively double the
speed of student learning. (Wiliam, Educational
Leadership, 2007-2008)
12And Even More Recently
- There is now a strong body of theoretical and
empirical work that suggests that integrating
assessment with instruction may well have
unprecedented power to increase student
engagement and to improve learning outcomes.
(Wiliam, D., 2011, Studies in Educational
Evaluation)
13Besides Analytical and Empirical Undergirding,
Heres Spiritual Support
-
- On October 13, 2009, I received an e-mail from
a colleague in Ohio, Dr. Saundra Brennan, who
relayed to me an invitation she had received from
the Ohio Association of Elementary School
Administrators. It was to take part in - A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT WORSHIP
14Formative Assessment What It Cant Do
- It cannot raise scores sufficiently on
instructionally insensitive accountability tests
such as those so widely used these days to
satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left
Behind Act.
15 A Definition of Instructional Sensitivity
- The degree to which students performances on
a test accurately reflect the quality of
instruction specifically provided to promote
students mastery of what is being assessed.
16Why Might a Test Item be Instructionally
Insensitive?
- Alignment Leniency
- Excessive Easiness
- Excessive Difficulty
- Confusion-Engendering Item Flaws
- Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links
- Academic Aptitude Links
17Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links
- If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
students from higher SES families, then the item
will tend to measure what students bring to
school rather than how well they are taught once
they get there.
18A 4th-Grade Reading Item
My fathers field is computer graphics.
- In which of the sentences below does the word
field mean the same thing as in the sentence
above? - A. The shortstop knew how to field his
- position.
- B. We prepared the field by plowing it.
- C. What field do you plan to enter when you
- graduate?
- D. The nurse examined my field of vision.
19Academic Aptitude Links
- If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
students who possess greater inherited
quantitative, verbal, or spatial aptitudes, then
the item will tend to measure what students bring
to school rather than how well they are taught
once they get there.
20A 4th-Grade Mathematics Item
- Which of the letters below, when folded in half,
will have two parts that match exactly? -
F (A) Z (B)
S (C) B (D)
21A Turn Talk Task
- Turning to a colleague (If you seem to be running
out of bright neighbors, you might move to
another group.), assume that your colleague is
not familiar with instructional sensitivity.
Thus, please explain to your colleague what
instructional sensitivity is, and how it can
reduce the accurate evaluation of teachers or
schools. Then switch roles.
22Why Partitioning It Can Pay Off
- We will now consider a partitioning proposal,
that is, a four-level view of formative
assessment. Although this and other partitioning
schemes should cleave to the essence of
research-ratified formative assessment, they
often help teachers clamber aboard the
formative-assessment flotilla.
23Four Levels of the Formative-Assessment Process
- Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
- Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
- Level 3 Classroom Climate Shift
- Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation
24Level 4 Strategies 1. Professional Development 2.
Teacher Learning Communities
- Level 3 Shifts
- Learning Expectations
- Responsibility for learning
- Role of classroom assessment
Four Levels of Formative Assessment
Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation
Level 3 Classroom-Climate Shift
Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
Learning Progressions
- Teachers Level 1 Steps
- Identify adjustment occasions.
- Select assessments.
- Establish adjustment triggers.
- Make instructional adjustments?
- Students Level 2 Steps
- 1. Consider adjustment occasions.
- Consider assessments.
- Consider adjustment triggers.
- Adjust learning-tactics?
25Formative AssessmentWhy Learning Progressions
Must Lurk
- (What a learning progression is)
- A learning progression is a sequenced set of
building blocks (that is, subskills and/or bodies
of enabling knowledge) it is thought students
must master en route to mastering a more remote,
target curricular aim.
26Two Learning ProgressionsBoth Useful to
Educators
- Upper-case LEARNING PROGRESSIONS
- Lower-case Learning Progressions
27Target Curriculum Aim X
Subskill B
An Illustrative Learning Progression
Enabling Knowledge B
Subskill A
Enabling Knowledge A
28A Horizontally Represented Learning Progression
29Formative AssessmentWhat a Learning
Progression is not
- A learning progression isnt unerringly accurate.
- A particular learning progression isnt going to
work for all students. - A learning progression isnt necessarily better
because its more complicated.
30A Final Turn Talk Task
- Why, despite substantial empirical evidence to
support formative assessment, are most Michigan
teachers not actually using it in their own
classes? Please explore this question with a
neighbor or with your entire small group. Can you
come up with any ameliorative fixes?
31To travel more suavely along the
formative-assessment trail, read one or more of
these encapsulations of wisdom
- Heritage, M., Formative Assessment Making It
Happen in the Classroom, 2010, Corwin - Popham, W.J., Transformative Assessment, 2008,
ASCD - Popham, W. J., Transformative Assessment in
Action, 2011, ASCD - Wiliam, D., Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011,
Solution Tree
32-
- Genial Jims e-mail address
- wpopham_at_ucla.edu